


summer chills

by fateline (orphan_account)



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Crushes, M/M, Pining, Slice of Life, banter bc this is markhyuck and that's their lifeblood hajsdhfd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 18:23:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14170845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/fateline
Summary: Humans are creatures of habit. As much as Donghyuck absolutely balks at being lumped in together with Mark, in the end, that's all they are.





	summer chills

**Author's Note:**

> this is a drabble of sorts that ran away and,, largely has no concrete plot,, and honestly not much of a plot at all,,,
> 
> this started off as a part of a larger story that i don't think i'll be writing anymore, and then i took this scene and got hypothetical so here it is in all its glory today!! :'))

The lead up to summers is never a happy or productive time, so completely honestly, it’s cruel that school still runs until and through then. 

Patterns catch up to you sooner or later too, and this is where Donghyuck always finds himself on stagnant June nights - the air's charged and it feels like a thunderstorm's going to roll in soon. That's okay, though. Donghyuck and Mark tend to be holed together in one of their houses more often than not on June nights like this, especially since high school started for Donghyuck three years ago, and the thunderstorm - they have a protocol for that, just as they've got one for dreary after school nights that tremble before the impending doom that culminating projects bring. 

“Like. You know, the question is, who can we interview? Who’s gonna be willing to drop their shit for a three day notice in advance?” Mark points out, perched from where he is on Donghyuck’s bed covers. It’s still the same old orange giraffe print that his grandmother had picked out from a few years ago. He hadn’t the heart to tell her no, and she drops in to visit more days of the week than not. She’d be devastated to see him not using it, as she’d been the last time the sheets had been in the wash.

“No one,” Donghyuck tells him snidely. He’s lying down, maybe a foot away, kicking his legs in the air distractedly. It’s too hot.

“You’re the one who said it’d be okay to leave it until this week! You knew I had the math test coming up and you said you got it covered!”

Donghyuck blinks at Mark slowly. “And you really believed that?”

Mark picks up the blanket and lobs it at Donghyuck’s head. Donghyuck leans out of the way. It falls against the wall in a dejected lump. “Of course not,” he says, scowling.

“Stop throwing family heirlooms, it’s not even your stuff!”

Mark looks thoroughly unimpressed, but there’s this faint undertone of guilt that he always carries when he’s berated. “I’m not, well, mad, really,” he says, completely ignoring Donghyuck. “But we wouldn’t be having this problem now if you had.”

“I do have ideas,” Donghyuck says defensively, “but not before you apologize to the blankets that my great-grandma brought back from Kyrgyzstan after a three hour long haggle with an esteemed local elder, which she passed onto my grandma who gave it to my mom and—”

Mark stands up on the bed shakily and moves to retrieve the blankets. He picks it up and dumps it all on Donghyuck’s head again, who sputters, protesting.

“Now. The. Ideas,” Mark says, smiling beatifically when Donghyuck sees daylight – or, well, eveninglight light again. Indoor-fluorescent-eveininglight.

“I was getting there,” Donghyuck grumbles, disgruntled. “We just interview someone who doesn’t have anything to drop. There. Easy peasy.”

Mark looks at him like he’s gum stuck to the bottom of his shoe, but, good gum you know? Donghyuck would never be the twenty-five cent dollar store bubble gum sticks that don’t even let you blow bubbles. “Yeah,” Mark says, and he draws it out real slow. “Like? Who’ve you got in mind?”

“You know the place we used to go afterschool sometimes?” Donghyuck asks, tilting his head up to look at Mark, who’s wobbling dangerously as he tries to walk forward a few steps on the bed. Alright. Grace comes to Mark in little episodes, and evidently today is not a good day.

Mark sticks a hand out and rights himself hastily. Thinks for a long second, and says, “We literally only ever hung out at my house.” Which, of course, is true, because Mark had never been much for going out before he’d found his twelfth grade basketball friends and had his Social Awakening, suddenly developing a party radar of sorts and magically working up the energy to make them when he couldn’t even get his sorry ass to Donghyuck’s house before.

“And who’s fault was that?”

“You didn’t fucking like new environments! You said they unsettled your delicate sensibilities!”

Donghyuck said that _once_. In _seventh_ grade when he’d been young, naive, and impressionable to think that Mark would let him live it down someday.

“You’re just jealous because you couldn’t become so in touch with yourself if you tried.” Donghyuck waves Mark off. “And that was in seventh grade,” he adds, sniffing, and throws a raised eyebrow in there too when Mark looks oh-so-impressed.

“What about my house?”

“Oh my god,” Donghyuck says, throwing his hands up as Mark stops and looks at him in confusion. Trust Mark to remember the project after five minutes of back and forth insulting. “It had nothing to do with your house. I wasn’t talking about your house.”

Mark Lee is a straight-A student. Mark Lee is an overachiever. Mark Lee has known Donghyuck for over thirteen years, half of many of which Donghyuck has as good as idolized him for some ass reason that his heart won’t explain to his brain, so Donghyuck has faith Mark Lee will know what he means by “the place.”

Mark stares at him helplessly. “The school roof?”

“The school roof,” Donghyuck says flatly. Maybe he spoke too soon. “Who do you wanna interview, the janitors?”

Mark looks affronted. He sits down on the bed hard, looking around for something to throw, but that’s really too bad for him because the pillow’s on Donghyuck’s side and the blanket’s now all there too, courtesy of Mark Lee himself. “They’re perfectly nice!”

“Nice, you say, but they’re all like. Eighty.” That’s the thing about Mark, not that Donghyuck would ever admit it to his face – literally everyone plus their long estranged thrice-removed uncle loves him, and he wouldn’t put it past him to be – god forbid – on a first name basis with one of the grandpas who dust the school.

“Ed’s super sweet though,” Mark says defensively. “He’s always super helpful after our team practices.”

Donghyuck snorts, flopping back while holding the bundle of blanket in his arms.

“One foot in the grave.”

“That’s not the point,” Mark protests, peering into his face, and Donghyuck’s finding it hilarious to see his disgruntled face so close upside down. He looks stupidly good even with the shitty angle and that’s not fair, but everyone loves Mark Lee and apparently that includes fate. No one’s supposed to look good when you’re looking up their nose. “We’re not going to interview Ed. Or any janitor. The project is that we’re supposed to bring to light some historical issue by interviewing a voice of the past. We’re supposed to like, I dunno, bring some sort of relevant but new take on the life of a person who’s brought change to this community.”

“Sounds like Parent Council managed to work their magic on our principal,” Donghyuck muses mournfully.

“It’s tragic," Mark says. He's kind of lost in thought though, and it comes out slow. "Another one lost to the cause.”

The first one lost is me, Donghyuck thinks, laughing to himself. Mark looks at him, head cocked, eyes questioning. Donghyuck smiles bright. Not lost to Parent Council, but he’s sure Parent Council would bend head over heels to appease Mark anyway—and that, Donghyuck could relate to entirely.

Tomorrow, Mark Lee would probably come into school with some brilliant idea about who they could interview, because he's Mark fucking Lee and at this point, everyone sort of expects this from him even if it exasperates Mark to no end - and Donghyuck too, because there's only so much idolizing your best friend that you can take. Tomorrow, Donghyuck will laugh and say it's a terrible idea. Tomorrow, they'll argue over this whole mess, and the butterflies in Donghyuck's stomach will come back gnawing because there's something that doesn't let you look away when Mark gets passionate about what he's talking about and that look comes into his eyes. 

Tomorrow, if Mark gets frustrated when Donghyuck's just not listening, he'll look up and he'll really _see_ and he'll realize that it's not as serious as he's making it out to be, because he gets too into it sometimes. There's things they might not agree on - the questions they'll ask for the interview, the questions they'll be asking themselves as for where they'll go in the future. Where they want to go in life. They might not talk to each other for days on end, but Mark always makes sure to show up at Donghyuck's locker at the end of the day. 

Sometimes they go home chatting, sometimes its five feet apart without a word. 

It's just the course of life, though, and they fall back into habits. 


End file.
